My Funky Dunky Twas

This week at school we went to are book buddies on Friday. Instead of reading we painted. Well I didn’t paint, my book buddy Karley painted. She did this cool fall painting. She painted a tree with a couple of leaves. The rest of the tree was branches. It was pretty cool to see grade 1 and 2's paint. I always thought it was so difficult to paint with a paint brush. Especially with wet paint under your arm, so if you put your arm down you would get paint all over your arm.

Also this week at school we played silent ball. You stand on a chair and you pass a ball without saying a word. That why it is called silent ball. If you don't catch the ball then you sit down. But if the other person throws low and you don't catch it then they are out. It is fun to play because you get to stand on your chair. But what if you fall down. You would get a big boo boo:(

This week there was a big run at Birds Hill Park. Some people went but some people stayed. It was only for the people for run club. One girl in are class came in 2nd. That is pretty good for a girl in grade 5. The class was quiet and empty. It was cool though because we had lots of room on the play structure to play because some of the grade 4,5,and 6's went to the run. They called it the Turkey Trot. It is such a funny name.

Last but not least... an experament!!! At school we did a experament that took so long to do. We were trying to form a cloud but sadley it failed:( We got to go in the staff room. Kayla kept on saying there is a secret button for a hot tub because every staff room has a hot tub.YA RIGHT!!! Mrs.Dent Scarcello got a pie plate full of ice. Then she got a jam jar half way full of hot water. Then she put the pie plate over the jar to form a cloud. But all it did was fog up.

Well that is it for my Twas. Thank you for reading it.

-Katie

Quality Blog Commenting

Today we discussed quality blog commenting. A quality comment involves:

1. Read the post you are going to comment on.
2. Compliment - Say something nice, leave a compliment related to the post. 
3. Connection - Make a connection to ourselves or our lives. 
4. Question - Ask a question related to the post. 
5. Leave your name, first name only. 
6. Re-read your comments to check for mistakes.

All comments go to Mrs. Dent Scarcello for approval keeping our blog community more controlled and safe. Our inspiration for this discussion stemmed from our conversations and experiences as well as a blog we follow, Mrs. Yollis' Class. They created a video about quality commenting. I think this is something we will explore next week during our Writer's Workshop in Daily 5!
After our discussion and reviewing how to leave a comment on our blog, we moved to the computer lab so the students could practice. Each child left a quality comment, following our criteria, on one of the posts on our blog. If they had time, they visited our virtual friends over in Mrs. Malkoske's Class to comment on their posts too.
Now, over the weekend, students are going to teach their families about quality commenting and leave a comment on our blog together! On my weekend I am going to teach other teachers about blogging at the MTS Fab Five conference! Mrs. Malkoske and I will be presenting "A Window to the World: Blogging in the Classroom". We will also be presenting two sessions at the SAGE (formerly SAG) conference in October. I am very excited to share the world of blogging with other teachers so that they will be inspired to start blogging with their students. I think blogging is a very empowering experience for children because they learn that what they think and write is important and worth sharing with a global audience.

Have a great weekend!
-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)


Here is Mrs. Yollis' video:

How to Compose a Quality Comment! from yourwonderfulteacher on Vimeo.

My Awesome Twas

This week at school we started spelling. This isn't the kind of spelling that you study words and have a spelling test at the end of the week, it's called "making big word" and this is how it works. First, Mrs. Dent Scarcello puts a word on the smart board and it is all mixed up like this week it was Millions and she mixed it up so it looked a little like this iiollmns and it looked like  2  3   4    5     6      7+. Then we would find as many words as possible and we where trying to find the big word. After a few minutes where up, she would say "Times up" and we would add up our score and there where awards for our weekly draw witch where first person to find the big word, Highest score, and Most words. I didn't win any but my score was 29.

Another thing was Me, Jada, Emily, Brooke and other people from our class. For recycling club, every Monday after lunch we take everyone's recycling bin and dump it into a bigger one. The bigger ones got dumped into an even BIGGER one. Then the recycling truck picks it up and takes it some where. When we are dumping the recycle bins, we all picked partners and of course, I picked Brooke.

On Tuesday it was the Terry Fox Fun!!! Now now don't get your hope's up cause it was raining and we did it IN DOORS whatever. For the (so it was said) Terry Fox run, we started in a corner and had to run around the gym twice and when we ran around twice we would grab a popsicle stick.Two popsicle sticks would represent one province. so you needed to run around the gym 26 times to run across Canada.

On Wednesday we had to run club in the halls because the weather was poor outside. We ran in the halls for A total of ten minutes all together. I know that I ran a bunch of laps but i didn't bother to count at all.The good thing was that there was a bunch of water fountains scattered along the school. Then at the end we did a sprint.

Last but not least we had Social Studies. In Social Studies we are learning about the history of Canada. So Far, where Just doing paper work on printing the meaning of seartian words in the glossary. I think I'm doing a great job on all of the Social Studies. The best part of Social Studies is Reading in the text books!!! -Peyton :)!!!

Class Edit - Math! Math! Math! Sharing Our Learning

After Brooke and Rachel wrote and self-edited their blog post to share their learning we used our SmartBoard to edit the post all together. We think they did a great job being the first students to write a "sharing our learning" blog post. Here is our edited version of their post.

Yesterday we learned about ones, tens, hundreds , thousands ect, in math. So Mrs.Dent Scarcello taught us anything times 10 you would put a zero in front of it like 10x10=100! We also talked about when you move to the next bigger place value it always gets 10 times bigger.We got twelve 100 paper squares and cut them up and taped ten of them together to make 1000. We had to find a way to make 10,000 with our table neighbours, one group had 5000 and the other groups needed 1 or 3 more people. We ended up with two groups of 10 000 and one group of 5 000. The total was 25 000 little squares. We took them out to the hallway and taped them together. We counted every single one of them and then we took a pretty picture from one end to the other. We destroyed it after, IT WAS FUN :) !!!!!!
- BrOoKe AnD rAcHeL (edited by grade 5)

Math! Math! Math!-sharing our learning!

Yesterday we learned about ones, tens, hundreds , thousands ect, in math. So Mrs.Dent Scarcello taught us anything times 10 you would put a zero infront of it like 10x10=100! Then we got twelve 100 paper squares and then we cut them up and taped ten of them together 1000. So then we had to find a way to make 10,000 with our table neighbours and one group had 5000 the other people needed 3 or 1 more people. Then we took them out to the hallway and taped them together and then we counted every single one of them and then we took a pretty picture from one end to the other and then we destroyed it after IT WAS FUN :) !!!!!! - BrOoKe AnD rAcHeL

Options, Options, Options in Daily 5!

So far I am really like daily 5 the writing is super fun. I used to hate writing because we always had a topic. now writing is super fun because I get my choice of a topic -Jessica :)

I really like daily 5 beacuse you get to write its so fun. In grade 2 i did not like writing at all but now i LOVE  writing. Right now I'm writing a story about  my dog bening a super hero i think its a pertty good story -Jada!

daily 5 is a great way to start the day because a couple years ago i always thout writing was boring but know it is fun because i have topics to write about.-Mason :o

i like daily 5 because you get to write about whatever you want its awesome.Kayla

Daily 5 is really awesome because we get to pick what we want to do. So far we have learned read to self and writers work shop. For read to self it's explains it's self you just read to your self. For writers work shop we can write a story, graphic novel, novel, poems, comics, song, or whatever you want!!! -Peyton :P

daily 5 is really fun because we get to pick what we want to do. Like we could read first for a while then write in are book it is really fun!;) my favorite type of writing is graphic novel and comics!;)-Brooke!!!

Diving Into Daily 5

This week we dove in to Daily 5. I used Daily 5 last year in grade 2 but it is brand new for our grade 5 class. Launching Daily 5 for the second time and in an older grade is a totally different experience too. We are having great discussions and everyone is quickly on the same page.

Our first choice is Read to Self. We have all agreed on the expectations and the kids were able to follow them amazingly, right off the hop. I am so happy that we seem to be a naturally engaged group of readers! I basically have to pry their books out of their hands when time is up.



Since Read to Self came so naturally and the kids were independent with it so quickly, I introduced our second choice this week as well - Writer's Workshop. This is one of my favourites because last year I had such a fabulous group of writers. They LOVED to write and we had so much fun exploring new ways of publishing. Once again, I am in luck! Our grade 5 community loves to write as well!

First we discussed expectations, brainstormed topics to write about and forms of writing. Today I released the authors and they dove "write" in. Again, when time was up it was music to my ears to hear the moans and groans because they didn't want to stop :)

Once again this year, I am really enjoying using the Daily 5 program and it is so neat to see that the students love it as much in grade 5 as they do in grade 2. Next week the students will post their reflections on the process of starting Daily 5. Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

My Fun TWAS!

This week at school our class went to library. Then I found out that we now have a couch in library its pink! I picked a book called "dog lost" it is a really good book. I also  had to get a book for my little bro. It is called "Alligator baby by Robert Munsch" you probably heard of it or maybe not?

We also did our portfolio covers. Mine is a wordle about school, subjects, etc. I think mine looks awesome! This year my portfolio's white. Usually it would be black but not this year it's different. I also put a A+ just to make it look better! Wink wink!

All of us in the class were doing the writers workshop. I am writing a story about a girl who wanted a dog i call it "Puppy love" cute hey?! Writing is also my favorite subject i have fun writing. We would always do writing in the morning for daily 5.

In science we are studying about the weather. We also have this temperature chart. And the weather person (its one of the jobs we have) would go on the smart board and search up what the weather is! Ok and this is my favorite part about it is we get to do our own weather video! And we get to meet a real weather girl!

By: Brooke

Reflections of a Grade 5 Student

We have had a great first 2 days of school. For most of the students in our class, this is the first blog we have had so, this is our first blog post! Now that we have spent some time together and started a few routines and activites, we are taking time to refelct on what we think of grade 5 so far and what we hope will come of it.

I hope we get to do some of the times table. Because I like to  learn math. -Emily

I'm looking forward to grade 5 because most of my friends are in my class and we will be doing lots of projects this year! -Brooke

I like my classroom this year a lot because there are a lot of my friends in my class this year! -Jada

I hope we do lots of writting and reading because I like to write and read. -Ashleigh

i liked the first day of school because i got to see everybody and we had gym on the first day. -mason :)

I hope we learn alot about animals because I LOVE animals and alot of them are very cute like dogs and hamsters! -Peyton

I felt sort of short for grade 5 but now I'm getting used to it. -Rachel

I feel to young for grade 5. But I will get the hang of it. -Katie :)

Already grade 5.It feels awesome! -Ricky

I like our class pet Sushi (hes cute) -Jessica


grade 5 feels to soon! -Kayla

First Day of School Traditions

Since I was little, I have always had a first day of school photo. Since I have been in school ever since (except for one year while I was skiing), I have continued that tradition and brought it to my classroom as well.

Jeff and I on the first day of school.

Our classroom community 2011-2012, grade 5 :)

Welcome Back, Welcome to Grade 5!

The behind-the-scenes work of a teacher during summer is over now, tomorrow is the first day back! It will be my first day as a grade 5 teacher and as the Technology Coordinator for the school. I am very excited for both parts of this year! Although I will miss so many things about grade 2, I am really looking forward to exploring technology through the eyes of a ten year old. I think we will do great things together. I am also very excited to finally get the chance to work with a SmartBoard, directly and in my classroom.
I hope you will continue to follow us here and you can also follow me on Twitter @5dentscarcello and @lesliedent. Have a great year!

-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)